Alto Duoro, from my experience on visiting countless European UNESCO listed vineyards, is probably the best of its kind. The inspiring views of endless beautiful steeply sloping vineyards on endless mountains along the Duoro River valley really show its superlative of its long history of manmade landscape for viticulture. From Porto, we drove to Sao Leonardo de Galafura for its famous viewpoint. Duoro Valley welcomed us with heavy rain and thunderstorm, we thought that Bacchus already cursed us since we could not find any outstanding wine for the past couples of days in Porto and Coimbra. Luckily that when we reached the viewpoint, the rain stopped, and we could admire the breathtaking view of the Douro valley, a perfect start for wine hunting day.

From Sao Leonardo de Galafura we took a hilly road to Peso de Regua, along the way was magnificent view of the sea of mountain vineyards, small villages and modern highway, the whole landscape was impressive of how natural environment has been transformed by 2000 years of wine industry. Quinta da Pacheca is the first Quinta of the day, while the view from this Quinta was just fine, the wine was superb, and we felt that our curse on wine was lifted by Bacchus. Then we continued along the riverside road to Pinhao. The Duoro became more majestic behind river dam, Barragem da Regua, tempting us to stop at few more Quintas, Branco, Popa and Tedo. The best one along this road, in term of view, probably is Quinta do Tedo, located on river peninsular where small Tedo River meet the Duoro. We lost some luck at the famous Quinta do Bomfim, which was closed for private event. At Pinhao we leisurely walked along the river admiring beautiful surrounding before ending our day with great dinner and the best wine of the day at Quinta de la Rosa, our hotel where we learned wine making process on the next day.  

As mentioned above, in my opinion, Alto Duoro is probably the best historic vineyard landscape in Europe. While vineyards along the river valley may not be special or unique as we can see similar things from Wachau or Moselle, the gigantic size of the whole lovely cultural landscape together with steeply sloping vineyards really provide the sense of wonder as great technological landscape as ICOMOS summarized in report to UNESCO. Steep slope vineyards along the Moselle Valley maybe the only one that can be compared with Alto Duoro, but again the size of Moselle was too small to bring it up. Another point that makes Alto Duoro more special is the quality and price of Portuguese wines, with high quality and affordable price make a visit really contrast to Burgandy or Medoc which made it easier to appreciate the whole experience of the whole Duoro Region.